Stanley Porter and Gordon Heath address a question in their recent book The Lost Gospel of Judas: Separating Fact from Fiction that is also addressed in the book by Jones I discussed in my last blog entry, the question (raised in particular by Bart Ehrman) of whether the views that became later ‘orthodox’ Christianity were in fact the ‘lucky winners’ among a number of diverse but equally early and equally valid viewpoints. When one puts it like that, it is... Read more

I just read Timothy Paul Jones’ little book Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus”, which sets about to expose the “fallicies” of not one but two of Bart Ehrman’s recent books, Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities. Jones’ book is full of entertaining Star Wars references, making it worth its weight in Republic Credits for that reason alone. But it seems to me that the book’s subtitle is almost as overstated as some of the... Read more

I am posting again a review of Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion that I made available earlier on my old blog as well as on the Richard Dawkins forum. This is to facilitate referring to it in a comment I am leaving on the Uncommon Descent blog, where (as I remarked before) the moderators have in the past shown an unwillingness to post comments reflecting dissenting viewpoints. Today’s comment appeared – it’s a promising sign! Dawkins’ book is at... Read more

Do you remember the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, or the various other series of a similar sort (such as Pick Your Path, Endless Quest, etc.)? As I wrestled with the fact that I like to begin my classes where my students are and work step by step from there, and yet my students in classes like my one semester course on the Bible are starting in all sorts of different places, it struck me that a “Choose Your Own... Read more

Let me begin by emphasizing that I would really rather be focusing on where Paul gets it right, the wonderfully insightful things he has written, and so on. Alas, in order to not have my appreciation of Paul misunderstood as a claim to his inerrancy or the inerrancy of his writings, it is necessary to point out not only where he writes things that offer a poignant challenge to contemporary readers, but also where he is not accurate in relation... Read more

In my religion and science class today I mentioned the Kirk Cameron-sponsored board game about evolution and intelligent design (which, for him at least, is the same thing as anti-evolutionary young earth creationism). Let me share, for those who may not have seen it, the infamous ‘banana argument’ Kirk lent his support to, as well as two informative and entertaining critiques of it, once again all on YouTube. I posted these before on my old blog, with additional commentary. I... Read more

I’m also going to share the first of three clips (each) about Richard Dawkins, Stephen Weinberg, and atheism that have been made available on YouTube. They will be of interest to students from my Religion and Science class, but presumably also to others. They are from a BBC series called “The Atheism Tapes”. I’m also sharing a clip of John Polkinghorne, and one of a very large number of excerpts from lectures by Ken Miller, who has had a key... Read more

I’m finally getting around to posting on last Saturday’s Masters of Science Fiction. Unfortunately I didn’t catch the beginning of the show, but even what I saw was wonderful, particularly as it relates to my current research on religion and artificial intelligence. A lawyer who is arguing the case that an android named Jerry is “human” does so by pointing out not its great intelligence (it was built with limited intelligence, to do things like eliminate mines from a minefield... Read more

There is an interesting blog post about the recent Wikipedia edits made by employees at Answers in Genesis. I will let it speak for itself, and share it merely as a follow-up to my previous blog entry about Wikipedia. Also amusing is the release of a creationism board game. There is a review of it in the latest Reports of the National Center for Science Education. Read more

There is a very important post about Richard Bauckham’s recent book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimonyon the Vridar blog. There it is drawn to our attention that one particular instance of testimony about the Holocaust (an example Bauckham uses in his book), which is assumed to be reliable, turned out to in fact be fiction. A similar point was made about oral tradition by Ted Weeden at SBL not that long ago, pointing out that whereas... Read more